Green Room

Teacher of the Year sexually abuses 17-year-old student

It wasn’t just any teacher who forced himself on a 17-year-old student, touching her in her most intimate places and snapping sexually explicit photos of her in a “cage” used for storage. No, it was Raemon Matthews, 57, a nationally acclaimed teacher at Samuel Gompers High School in the Bronx.

New York’s Daily News reports that Matthews pled guilty earlier this year to a misdemeanor for fondling the girl and was barred from teaching. But the full extent of his depravity was not revealed until a member of the school’s maintenance staff recently chanced upon a DVD labeled 300during a routine cleaning of the classroom. Believing the disk to contain an action movie by that name, the worker inserted it into a DVD player and was shocked to discover its actual contents—photos of a teenage female “in various stages of undress.”

The worker turned the disk over to school authorities, who in turn contacted the New York City Department of Education. A subsequent investigation revealed that Matthews had coerced the student into posing for nude and semi-nude photos, telling her it was to “attract college recruiters and employers.” He had also fondled her breasts, buttocks, and “private parts,” according to investigators.

When the girl protested after a year of lewd extracurricular activities and said she wanted to stop, Matthews, who is married, reportedly told her, “No Boo-Boo, we’re just getting started.” He also allegedly told the teen that she was in danger of failing and needed extra help.

The female, now 20, told the New York Post she kept the arrangement secret out of fear that Matthews would hurt her. “It was hard for me, it was like a big trauma,” she is quoted as saying. “I didn’t want anybody to know because I was embarrassed.”

Matthews, who taught at the predominantly low-income, minority school since 2000, has been cited in a number of books on effective teaching and was twice named Teacher of the Year. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige praised Matthews during a visit to the school in 2002. As a result, Matthews was invited to Washington, D.C, to demonstrate his methods.

He has pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and was sentenced to one year of probation.

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Believing the disk to contain an action movie by that name, the worker inserted it into a DVD player and was shocked to discover its actual contents—photos of a teenage female “in various stages of undress.”

These types of stories never show up with any prominence on most websites. They keep going on about the catholic church and the boy scouts, but no one seems to be willing to acknowledge that this stuff happens in schools too. It seems to be a way of smearing by omission. all groups have problems, but we’ll only report on problems in certain kinds of groups.

For every Catholic priest that is accused of molestation, 40 teachers are accused.

This is a point pointed out by Ann Coulter in one of her books.

Its a bit of a statistical illusion, but the point stands.
Teachers are not vilified for it, in fact, if you were to only listen to the liberal spin, teachers are closer to the Divine than clergy.

Why is that?

Mimzey on October 15, 2012 at 4:22 PM

Every time a priest character is introduced in a drama, I think to myself: “Will this the day a tv show won’t pull out the cliched ‘pervert priest’ stereotype?” But no, that day never comes, tv writers are always more than happy to indulge in that tired trope; snout-deep, like pigs in slop.

Thanks for the stat. The liberal slant is so pervasive that I am convinced that there are many people out there writing this way that have no idea how much their worldview is altered by the persistant skew of MSM.

I think that is why it is so easy to be called a conservative crackpot for bursting the liberal echo chamber. It is like you are coming in from outer space to some of these people.

the more I explore dialogue on liberal, conservative and supposedly neutral or other topic based sites, the more intrigued I am about how much of an impact the liberal media has on our thought processes and on “conventional wisdom”.

I enjoy challenging it whenever I can in whatever small way I can. Your little stat (from Ann Coulter) will come in handy.